Public domain pros and cons

What are the disadvantages of releasing a typeface as public domain as opposed to creative commons? Assume in this case I don't care about controlling the project after it's been released, don't expect monetary compensation and I'm fully comfortable with the idea of it being in the public domain.

To expand​ on what Khaled wrote: public domain is going to result in email. From all the people who don't know what it means. They're going to want you, a Canadian living in Nagoya, to try adjusting it to their locale. But Creative Commons is already explained in simple terms in just about any language that exists on the web. So a CC license probably means fewer support emails for free font.

None of the cc licenses, including cc zero, are good for fonts. All except cc zero have attribution terms which may require eg a business card to have attribution text about the typeface. Cc zero says you can't assert any other rights in the work, even if you later want to on some situation.

If you want to allow unrestricted use, the spirit of public domain, use the sil ofl.

Or, offer the font under the user's choice of several highly permissive licenses.

That's also not a good idea imho, because if the OFL is one of them, it prohibits redistribution by downstream people "under any other license."

The OFL and only the OFL is the best way to make font available without restrictions to the general public, with requirements that maintain the work in that status. Everything else was not written for the unique situation that a font is in, and doesn't fit quite right in some way.

If you want to allow unrestricted use, the spirit of public domain, use the sil ofl.

Or the fantastically simple and unrestrictive MIT license: the 'do-whatever-the-fuck-you-want' license.

Rather, that's http://www.wtfpl.net But WTFPL is a terrible idea for serious work, not only because it is inherently unwelcome in important contexts (eg, anything involving kids, and some businesses) but because it is not legally sound (and therefore prohibited in large businesses.)

The MIT license has a similar problem to the main CC licenses, in that it requires distribution of the license alongside the work, and since the design is subject to copyright or other rights in some places, and doesn't have a document embedding exception, then the simple requirement is prohibitively restrictive.

The OFL is a copyleft license, so while it's a license that is specifically tailored to fonts, it's definitely not similar to releasing a font into the public domain.

A good "public domain" license would allow the licensee to use, study, copy, merge, embed, modify, redistribute, and sell your font without any compensation or obligation to mention your name or obligation to release the derivative work under any specific license, plus the usual warranty disclaimer ("THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND," etc).

I still feel that CC0 is the best option if you want nothing from your font or glyph or whatever.

"copyleft licenses" and "public domain" are pretty much the opposites of each other. If I base my work on a work that has been published under a copyleft license, I must publish my work under the same license. Since OFL is a copyleft license, and it prohibits selling derivative fonts, if I publish my font under OFL, I publish my font “for free” but I also force anybody who’d want to reuse even a few glyphs from my font in their font to also publish their font for free. In other words, other people are prohibited from selling things based on my thing, if I publish it under OFL.

That may or may not be want you want as an author. An OFL license is very restrictive in the sense that only the original copyright holder is allowed to sell the fonts, but those who add to the fonts or change something are not. If the original designer passes away or goes AWOL, that “monoply” to make money through sales (and possibly find financing for further improvement) may “freeze” for some 70 or 90 years.

“Public domain” (or CC0) is very different. It's right for you if you, as the original author, are not interested at all in restricting what other people may do with your work. If a font is CC0, others can extend it or modify it or reuse portions of it, and be free to do whatever they want with the results (sell, publish for free, under whatever license etc.).

In other words, with copyleft licenses like OFL, you as the original author retain much control over what others may do with your fonts, while with “copynull” licenses like CC0 (public domain) you relinquish all control.

Perhaps we need to clarify whether we're talking here about a typeface design or a font? Ray's original post spoke of 'releasing a typeface as public domain', but some of the follow-up comments refer to fonts.

@John HudsonIt's a family of 6 fonts. I'm probably going with CC0 and anyone making variations or derivative fonts will be free to release it themselves under whatever license they want. OFL doesn't seem to fit because there's a unique symbol set that I want to make available for inclusion in other fonts with no attribution requirements. I checked all the OFL licenses and they seem too restrictive for this particular project but perhaps useful for projects where I want to retain some rights.

One thing that we hadn't mentioned here is multiple licensing: much software (e.g. the FreeType rasterizer) is released under dual licenses, while some fonts are released under multiple licenses.

It is possible to release a font under two concurrent licenses, e.g. "OFL and CC0" or "MIT and OFL", or even "OFL and commercial EULA".

With multi-licensed software, the user can choose which license is more suitable to their needs and use just that one.

The tricky thing is that if they modify/extend your font, they math release the changes under just one license, or several. So with a "CC0 and OFL" licensed font, another user could add some glyphs, and release there modified version under "OFL", "OFL and CC0", "just CC0" and, since CC0 is de facto public domain, also under any other license, commercial or opensource, or a combination of licenses.

The "OFL and CC0" combo may not be very suitable for your project, but I'm mentioning this mechanism for the sake of completeness. Sometimes, multi-licensing is useful, especially when creating code or fonts which is of interest for various communities, each of them being invested into a particular license or licensing model (e.g. one group wants copyleft code like GPL or OFL, another wants a liberal license like BSD, MIT, Apache 2 or CC0).

Sure. It is crucial to remember: as the copyright owner, I can do whatever I want with my own creation. It is only the non-authors (the rest of the world so to speak) who are bound by the licenses.

Note thsome commercial font distributors may not accept a font for sale which is available for free somewhere else — for the distributor, the opensource distribution channel may be a competitor.

But still, many foundries that have released opensource fonts (Ascender, URW++, Adobe) also sell these fonts under a commercial license.

Sometimes the opensource offering has a smaller glyphset or fewer styles, or be released under a slightly or completely different name — but this is not always so.

Some users choose to buy a commercial license even if the same product is available freely, because they get support and clarity as to their rights and obligations. This is not a solid strategy, it won't work for everyone, but it can work.

More often however, the commercial offering does include something extra which the free version doesn't have. And of course quite often an opensource font is customized commercially for a particular larger client.

...as the copyright owner, I can do whatever I want with my own creation.

Excepting as contractually restricted. That is, sometimes works are created under contract, and even though one retains copyright the contact terms might place some restrictions on the exercise of that copyright. So, for example, Tiro owns the copyright to the Slabo fonts, but under the contract by which Google paid for the development of the fonts we can only license them under OFL or Apache 2.0.

(This is not legal advice, nor the view of my employer, but merely my own personal chat on this forum.)

Adam, first, cc0 and ofl are not opposite of each other at all, their joint opposite is restricted licenses. It's naughty of you to conflate up and down in that way

Both respect the public's right to make derivatives, and ofl keeps the public's right intact and cc0 doesn't. If someone's goal is to dedicate a typeface to the public domain, ofl makes more sense to me at achieving that goal.

Second, as you well know, the ofl requires downstream distribution to be under the ofl "and only this license." Or words to that effect. So while your observation is true that someone who is a copyright holder for 100% of the work can distribute under several licenses, it's only true in a narrow sense with that qualifier; when the work has a second copyright holder, it seems to me that they are bound to only distribute under ofl, or only under the other license​, because the ofl forbids distribution under non-ofl licenses.

And this your proposed dual license scheme fails at the first redistribution.

Dave, the OFL requirement of downstream distribution being under the same OFL license is exactly what makes OFL distinct from public domain. I mean, there's nothing in the public domain status of the plays of Shakespeare that requires a publisher to distribute books for free or to allow another publisher to rip off the covers and distribute them under another cover.

Now, it may simply be the case that software and other digital media works don't really have an equivalence of public domain as properly understood. The fact that we're debating what font software license is most like public domain indicates that this might be so: that software never escapes from licensing, whereas true public domain is the absence of any license (the earliest forms of legal copyright were licensed monopolies granted by the state: absence of license was absence of copyright).

Maybe our categories are confused, and it only makes sense to talk in terms of public domain with respect to typeface designs, not fonts?

John, you are raising a point that I was only referencing by implication, so I want to thank you for that. My view is that in the eu and many other places, unlike the us, and as Khaled had said, you can't put something in the public domain, it can only have the monopoly rights adhered to it expire. So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties. Maybe you don't mind your work that you intended for everyone with a computer not being available to everyone with a computer, but it seems kind of short sighted to me.

Ray, you say you want fewer support emails. Only the ofl is going to deliver that, because everything else is less common and going to generate more questions. Adam and John both know from the Noto mailing list how many questions Noto gets, under ofl, so there's no way away from it, but using the same license as the majority of other libre fonts (with an extensive and well maintained FAQ) is the best Ray can do. (Well maybe the way to get away from it completely is to ask someone else to maintain the fonts. I'm happy to do that... If they are ofl

In the USA typeface designers are categorically all public domain except those subject to design patents which are very few and those last for 15 years. In the eu there are design rights that adhere for a few years unless registered and then join the public domain; if registered they join after 5 years unless re-registered, which can be done up to a maximum term of 25 years. In most places it's ambiguous. In Israel typeface designs are subject to regular authoring copyrights, so I'm not sure how anyone draws anything there without risking a lawsuit. Well, they just shoulder the risk, I guess.

Anyway, I don't think the meaning of the public domain is that all monopoly rights expired, that's just the situation. The meaning of all monopoly rights expiring is that the public's freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute the work is unfettered; and no monopoly rights can be re-adhered (as far as I know.) So the ofl recreates that situation before the monopoly rights expire.

“In the USA typeface designs are categorically all public domain except those subject to design patents”(corrected “designers” to “designs”)

This is true of the abstract design. Note that the instantiation of that design in a digital outline font is subject to copyright, however. This is true as far as has been tested in the courts to date, and as recognized by the copyright office, which made a specific policy change to allow copyright registration of the code of outline fonts (PostScript, TrueType, OpenType).

So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties.

I don't think third parties are subverting that intent unless they were somehow able to prevent other parties from continuing to make the work freely available. What I like about something like the MIT license is that it allows basically any use at all, including 3rd parties finding novel ways to economically exploit the value of the work, and derivatives thereof, without undermining the right of anyone else to obtain and distribute the work or their own derivatives freely. That actually corresponds pretty well to my usual intent when I open source something: I really do think people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it so long as they don't interfere with other people doing whatever the fuck they want.

So if your intent is to gift something to humanity, to make it available to everyone, which seems to me the actual urge behind an attempt to put something in the public domain, then the ofl and licenses like it keep that intent intact, while licenses like cc0 and mit/bsd/Apache do not and allow that intent to be subverted by downstream 3rd parties.

I don't think third parties are subverting that intent unless they were somehow able to prevent other parties from continuing to make the work freely available. What I like about something like the MIT license is that it allows basically any use at all, including 3rd parties finding novel ways to economically exploit the value of the work, and derivatives thereof, without undermining the right of anyone else to obtain and distribute the work or their own derivatives freely. That actually corresponds pretty well to my usual intent when I open source something: I really do think people should be able to do whatever the fuck they want with it so long as they don't interfere with other people doing whatever the fuck they want.

I think preventing Nth party downstream recipients from locking up the work and thus preventing N+1th parties doing what they want furthers your aim.

I think preventing Nth party downstream recipients from locking up the work and thus preventing N+1th parties doing what they want furthers your aim.

If what the Nth party has done is so significant as to be preventatively difficult for someone else to reproduce based on what the N-1th party had done, then maybe it represents an added value that the Nth party should be able to exploit. If what the Nth party has done is not so significant, then the N+1th party can go back to N-1 to reproduce it, or to any other open version all the way back to the original.